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In my previous decksercising post I more or less stampeded over the details of the planks at the deck edge and received some comments from John Tennier, followed by drawings and documents, to underline I was missing a few key aspects of the deck (which is a polite way of saying I completely missed the point and rightfully so). I left the deck information to simmer for a while, having a bit of a modelling burnout due to a combination of circumstances making 2015 a poor year.  I did plan to spend most of my vacation days around last Christmas picking up the modelling but ended doing mainly more work and the rest of the time, well..

the deck of the hobby room needed some repair after the north wall was modified when our house was refitted, so here I am adding the last bit of the spurnwater in the hobby room and relaying the deck using a mix of salvaged planks and new ones. The fun part is that we need to do the other half this Christmas vacation… But I’ve gathered enough patience to absorb the onslaught of tiny modelling disappointments when trying out something entirely new, such as “perfect” decks details. Naturally, you can buy these wooden decks you can glue to your kit, but there are many reasons why I do not want that; the contrast in the decks lines is too high and I prefer the hand-painted deck look. Plus, I build my models to scale and not to fit some kit so it’s not really an option to try such a deck anyway.

The documents John sent me were “Shipyard practice as applied to ship construction” by Neil McDermain and a CAFO on deck coverings. Most of the info below is ‘recycled’ from these documents. The length of the plank is generally 24ft, or, 20.9mm on 350 scale. Planks are between 2.5 to 3 inches thick and 5 to 9 inches wide (5-7: CAFO, 9″ McDermaid), though the Anatomy of the Ship drawing I1 states that the planks aboard HMS Hood were 9 inches wide. That translates to slightly over 0.65mm wide on 1/350 scale. Now, I applied Evergreen 2025 V-grooved styrene to simulate the deck with a spacing of 0.25″ (or 0.635mm) that is just perfect.

Now, if I look at the image above and the what I assume to be a 4″ shell as a reference I get a plank width of about 8″ so that’s a actually bit less. The rest of the smaller images using distances between vents and such result in 7.6, 8.15 and 7.0″ when compared to the AOTS (The last one is a bit lower so perhaps that angled plate was not entire drawn properly to scale in the AOTS?). So, the actual plank width was probably much closer to 8″ than 9″ and we would have wanted a 0.58mm spacing. The only alternative I know of for a deck plate is Evergreen Car Siding 2020 that leads a (scaled) plank width of 6.9″ so the 2025 is actually less wrong and even if it weren’t, replacing the decks would be worse than just starting the entire model over from scratch.

On the edge of the deck with the hull there is a waterway that is laid first and is 15 to 18″ wide. For the ship the planks are laid in the centreline first and the position of all the planks is marked on deck. The planks are bolted to the deck on studs fastened to the steel deck. The plank end would be too fine for fastening and caulking if it were simply cut off at the waterway intersection, so a cut is made about third of the plank width into the waterway perpendicular to the plank and then connected where the waterway and plank first meet . The result is a nice nibbing pattern.

The pattern of nibbing around deck fixtures is not consistent between ships; the top left shows the nibbing around the bollards where a margin plank was present at the short end of the bollard emplacement, but not so for HMS Hood. The top-right image is from HMS Hood, showing the nibbing of the aforementioned quarterdeck deckplate. The lower image is of HMS Rodney; here the nibbing of the planks does not follow the barbette everywhere; there is not even a margin plank.

Margin planks are present at the flanks of the barbette but at what angle they stop differs between drawings and is very difficult to spot on photographs. For my model I simply took the 37 degrees as in the Anatomy of the ship.

This wonderful aerial shot of HMS Queen Elizabeth shows the deck details clearly and there is much to see. Note how the ends of the planks align really well and that there are 4 planks between planks with matching ends. The staggered pattern continues throughout most of the deck. Although it’s not too well visible, it appears the pattern does not continue between the barbettes, as you would expect with a barbette a large interruption of the deck planking. Very large margin planks are visible around the hatch coamings and bollards.

This is a KGV-class, showing the margin planks around the hawse pipes. Chafing plates preventing damage to the deck by the anchor chain really lie on top of the existing planking and no nibbing is present. The hatch a bit further down in the distance does not have visible margin planks (the hatch coamings in front of the breakwaters and on the quarterdeck were fitted ‘blast plates’ angling out at 45 degrees and other hatch coamings may have other styles?).

The breakwater is slightly more complicated and I do not have good shots of HMS Hood’s. On this shot of HMS Rodney it appears there’s a wide ‘margin’ plank present at the breakwater right and the planking pattern continuing at either side. There is no nibbing present.

However, the other end shows some more detail. A few more planks are visible behind the second breakwater of HMS Queen Elizabeth, Rodney, Prince of Wales and an unidentified ship, with three planks fitted beneath the breakwater and its supports. Tricky, as my model is already fitted with a breakwater and I agreed with myself not to destroy anything (anymore).

A few minor details (Rodney) with no margin plank at the rear of the barbette (A). For the various deck fittings it appears sometimes there is a margin plank (B) and sometimes not (C). This leaves some artistic license when detailing the deck.

HMS Rodney again; near small derricks and eyelets the details appears to be quasi-random. The shot of HMS Hood’s anchor arrangement four images up shows not such planking around an eyelet. The plank nibbing is particularly well visible.

How to actually add all the deck detail is for the next update.

(This post was updated to remove some erroneous conclusions on the decks, to be discussed in the next decksercising post)

My model was built using Evergreen V-grooved styrene. At the time I didn’t know there was a finer material called Car Siding which I prefer to having used. Too late now. Also, many preprinted and lasercut decks than can be bought and added to most models. Some of these look really great but even with the finest wood grain they still look a bit odd to me, but they add a lot of detail I might have added to my model. What do the decks of HMS Hood look like in terms of structure?

Here you can see the deck in progress of HMS Hood taken from Ian Jonhston’s Clydebank Cruisers (I cannot recommend this book enough). This and other images show how they started with a line of two planks from start to end and the rest are added later. At the far left of the image you see the planks are simply cut off at an angle.

Note how the planks end; the one at the far left corner has the same length as every fifth one to the right of it.

Now, on many of the premade decks have a lot of detail in the deck around all the pieces of equipment, but here there is no structure whatsoever in the deck other than the planks. So no planks / frames around skylights, hatch comings, vents and so forth.

On t0 the painting . I start by airbrushing the deck in Humbrol 72 (Khaki drill mat) and letting it dry for 24 hours. I then first add a new layer of H72 by brush and paint in a very large scale accents adding white and a tiny bit of van Dyk brown. Then it’s time for my smallest brush, painting in the planks semi regularly with a larger brush standing by for corrections. The deck is painted with H72 and H110 (natural wood) with white and van Dyk brown mixed in. Although the real deck is irregular, I wanted to have at least some structure visible and painted an odd/even spacing, but not so much you would notice. This is before adding the wash that pulls all colors closer together, so one goal of the exercise was to learn how far the colors need to be apart, before washing, to look good after washing. I made several test pieces, also throwing in some H83 (too yellow) and H84 (H72 relabeled; at least, they are so close in tone I wonder why they bothered to issue it), but I like this one best.

After the paint as dried (again 24 hours) I added a few van Dyk washes; I wanted some brown to interact with the planking detail and not black. I also wanted to avoid an overly hard effect of  black caulking lines. I think I need to add a coating first as the paint was damaged in one location (beneath the turret). I really like the effect I have now but I’m a bit conflicted as I do not want to see individual planks but I also want color variation! And I want to see individual planks too and for them to be all the same color!

I have to be a bit more careful with the H110 but otherwise I think the effect is starting to look really good. I also have to be careful with all the small hairs and dust collecting in the paint; some of it probably accumulate during drying (add cap when drying) and lot of dust flows with wash…

Meanwhile, all photo-etched deck lockers have been soldered and painted as a small how-to-highlight-tiny-details painting exercise. A few minor corrections are required in a few shadow lines. I really like how well my solution for the design of these lockers worked out with the small legs running to the far edge of the locker extending below the fold line of the part done like so

The part right was supposed to act as a backbone but was not required; it was much easier to solder the part without it. The lid was held in place with tape before soldering which was a nice new challenge in terms of positioning.